Synonym for upper-case. Education, who needs it nowadays?

Dude, you might want to check this: Germany’s army is so under-equipped that it used broomsticks instead of machine guns (Feb, 19, 2015)

Or this older article from 2014: http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/the-german-military-faces-a-major-challenge-from-disrepair/2014/09/30/e0b7997c-ea40-42be-a68b-e1d45a87b926_story.html

Hell, just google "Germany military equipment problems". When German soldiers have to use broomsticks to hide the facts they did not have heavy machine guns during a NATO exercise, I have to say your post is full of uninformed baloney. This particular incident, that is the kind of crap I would expect from an underdeveloped nation, not from the fourth largest economy.

LaTeX? You are batshit crazy. And I say this as a person who loves LaTeX and has used it for actual projects several times.

This is true but useless. Furthermore, it doesn't address the argument that technology is being pushed down kids' throats to the detriment of other more valuable skills.

That is an opinion, not a fact. And here is a prime example of a skill not being thought, separating opinions from facts.

And let's suppose for the sake of arguments that this is true. At least in this country, we are doing a shit-piss-poor jobs at teaching reading and basic mathematics to the general population. It doesn't matter squat if some wealth-to-do neighborhoods (like the one I live in) have excellent schools with kids capable of competing with any kid from, say, Finland. It doesn't matter because for each of those kids, there is a bunch of other kids who graduate from HS without knowing how to add fractions, or read news from different sources and synthesize an informed opinion.

So, in that background, does it really make any sense to pile more technology when we are fucking up teaching the basics???

And this very rhetorical question is made on the assumption that coding is nowadays as important as a general skill as reading and math. And that assumption is not accurate at all.

But runs counter to your previous sentence saying that coding/technology is a basic skill like math or reading. It is either a basic skill or an augmentation of basic skills. I do not see how it can be both.

But that is pretty much the net effect. We cut on fine arts and history electives and we do a crappy job at teaching how to read and write. Without that, it is very hard, if not impossible to learn how to investigate and question, let alone see examples of public speaking or participate in such activities.

If we are already compromising teaching of those skills, what do you think happens we pile on yet another subject, one which requires a context for it to be meaningful (technology)? Something has to give, and it is typically the thing that is not new and shinny.

I've been a teaching assistant for programming and business-related computer classes when I was in CS grad school. And sorry to say, but that statement above is not true. You need to have a grasp of basic skills before learning reasonable examples of how to use technology for solving problems. This is more important for kids.

You can find a definition here.

I'm old, but I can use google, and before that Altavista and before that the dreaded usenets. Some of my managers or former managers are in their 60's and they are the first ones to hit that shit (with the browsers in their smart phones if needed) when they encounter an acronym that they don't know. Hell, my mom who is in her 70's and who is not a technical person at all knows how to use google.

I really don't get the "Maye I'm Old" meme.

The acronym has already been defined for an "eternity" relative to Internet-based technology. You just don't know it (which is fine), and can't find a way to find a meaning for it (which, in a technical-oriented forum, it is not fine.)

That's a demand you can make to the government, not to private entities.

You mean you do potentially mass commits before checking, or even before compiling or running unit tests because problems with compilation and unit tests can - and will - occur when refactoring/renaming of artifacts is done wrong?

Coding something that one can easily get wrong (bad regular expression) and spending time debugging it when you have already built-in functionality typically coupled with a transparent mass undo? You are such a professional.

None. When I go to Japan, it is impossible not to notice how intelligent people are. Intelligent as in being able to express themselves, to think, reason, and synthesize positions out of multiple sources of information. This is not to say there aren't ignorant dumb-asses over there, but you can tell that basic, common education delivers over there.

Here, education is quite unequal. Some schools have nothing to envy from countries like Finland, whereas other schools churn graduate kids who cannot add fractions or read an Op.Ed. Student cohorts that gravitate to the later condition tend, IMO, to be the ones least likely to understand the benefits of technology.

Before we even get to the point of teaching technical skills to kids, we need to first worry about teaching them how to reason and operate effectively in a literate world. When they do that, a whole world of thinking opportunities, tasks and problems requiring solving comes into existence.

That gives a context in which technology can be applied. Better yet, people that are already literate begin, on their own, to apply technology to their needs. Beyond that, HS kids need to know the basics of computer security (recognizing spam attempts, running an anti-virus, backing up data on thumb drives, etc.) and basic usage of spreadsheets and word processors.

The last two (spreadsheets and word processors) can only be used effectively in a "problem" context. You use spreadsheets to create a balance, or budget, or to track expenses, or to calculate your mortgage rate, or how the cost of material and labor in making a home repair. That comes with a good understanding of arithmetic and algebra applied to real world problems (such as personal finance).

And all that comes from the capacity of engaging in abstract thinking. Form follows function. The form of solving a problem (using technology) follows function (the need to solve a problem). And a person cannot envision a problem or a need to solve it if he/she cannot think about it in practical, useful and abstract terms.

It is if it causes mass unemployment. The industrial revolution did show us how to do things in more economical (and at times safer) ways. With that said, for the first 30-40 years of this period, by several estimates, about 1/3 of the working class was employed, 1/3 permanently in a state of half-employment, and the remaining 1/3 in a permanent state of unemployment, with nothing but scrapping by.

Let those numbers sink in. Poverty increased among the lowest sectors of society, in large numbers. It took decades for markets to "heal themselves".

We can give economies and societies of the time to not give a shit, or not even understanding the implications because, well, people act according to the times.

But what is our excuse now. I am not against modernization or globalization, but by God, private entities need to do a better job at looking at the consequences (which, if you play it right, can actually become profitable opportunities in creating new markets in which the unemployed transfer to work.)

And if private entities cannot or do not want, the it is up to the State. Because someone has to. This isn't the late 1700's, early 1800's. If we ever fall for the last option, we have only ourselves to blame.

And anyone who things the negative impact of change is negligible simply because change is gradual also misunderstand how markets work. These damages take decades to get undone. And here we are talking beyond the mere concepts of markets. We are talking about national policies. We have been taking purely market-driven ideological points up our asses for the last 2-3 decades without any national policy to handle the aftermaths, and see where it has taken us.

People that revolt from a position of abject poverty and unemployment are extortionists?

We do not get anything in return? How about this? We don't get our heads on a pitchfork. Put millions of people out of work and bad violent shit is bound to happen. Fucking history is right there to tell you this. How stupid can we be that do not see the self-preservation benefit of not putting millions of people out of work?

This is the stupidest false dichotomy bullshit I've seen in a long time. No one is saying no to automation. What the concern is, how do we plan to introduce automation in the trucking industry while simultaneously handle the 10 +/- million people that will be affected? Do we just introduce automation and let markets self-heal (which is pretty much dog-eat-dog), or do we put in place transition job and training programs to ameliorate the impact of unemployment until the bulk of people is able to transition into other job sectors.

That you miss the gist of the problem shows that you are not as smart as you think you are, or you simply do not care. Don't know which is scarier.